The Flash: Parallel Universes? Be it so!
Welcome to Earth-2, the latest episode inside Barry Allen’s adventures, finally tells us that the series as still a lot to say about its characters.
For the first time in the Arrowverse, Barry and Co. decide to take a look at what’s on the other side.
The season-long fight against Zoom is coming to an end and in preparation for the big moment, the Star Labs crew is closing all the breaches in Central City that connect the two Earths.
Harry and Barry are friends and partners, once again, and their ultimate goal (other that defeating Zoom) is to save Harrison’s daughter. To do so, they decide to travel through the bridge that’s beneath the Star Labs and to face the enemy once for all.
I can tell how finally Flash’s saga is coming to an interesting point: the last few episodes have been more of fillers than real game changers in the story. Finally, the plot is moving on with this beautiful plot line.
As binge-watcher, I have grown up with shows like Fringe, who make use of parallel universes a lot. So I could not wait for this part of the season to come.
The actual travel through the bridge is quite amazing. Barry, Harrison Wells and Cisco are the ones selected for the journey. In the bridge they, and we with them, experience flashes from the future and from other universes. We get to see what it seemed to be Oliver Queen as an older version of the Green Arrow, or maybe it was just Robert Queen as the green vigilante from Earth-2. We get to see an homage to a Flash from the comics and a glimpse into Supergirl, clearly to tease at the future crossover between The Flash and Supergirl, as it was announced days ago. It will happen on Monday, March 28, on CBS.
The whole episode is directed towards the idea of Barry messing around with the doppelgängers on Earth-2. He has some great moment with Iris-2 and Joe-2. It’s fanny and yet weird watching Barry interacting with all the people he sees as his family but that are completely strangers to him. He discovers that the Barry from Earth-2 doesn’t have any power and that he’s happily married with Iris. The episode is full of funny moments of acknowledgments of awkwardness, every time Barry meets some of the doppelgängers from Earth-2. As for example when Barry meets Deadshot, who is now the CCPD commissioner; or when we discover that Captain Cold has become the Mayor of Central City.
As in Earth-1, the threat of meta-humans is in the public domain. Everyone knows about them and everyone has special smartwatches that help them to discover whether there’s any in proximity.
That exactly happens when we get to see the bad guys from Earth-2. They are all meta-humans and they are the doppelgängers of Caitlin Snow (as Killer Frost), Cisco Ramon (as Reverb) and Ronnie Raymond (as Deathstorm).
In particular, the encounter of Cisco with his doppelgänger is one of the finest moment of the series. Cisco learns that his powers as Vibe are more powerful than he expected. The three villains, though, are under control of Zoom.
The moment that got me the most, though, was when Barry enters his house in Earth-2 and discovers that his mother is still alive. He then makes a call and we found ourselves in this so touching moment when we get to see Barry almost crying at the voice of his mother on the phone. It was totally unexpected and therefore too beautiful.
At the end of the episode, Zoom comes into the scene just to brutally kill Reverb and Deathstorm and to kidnap Barry. Next week’s Escape from Earth-2 will definitely be hilarious and entertaining and, at the same time, crucial for the future development of the series. I can’t wait for it to come.
P.S. I can cross out Earth-2’s Joe from the list of the candidates for the role of Zoom.
